Deepwoods (Book 1) (20 page)

“I swore not to say their name,” she apologized, spreading
her palms in a helpless gesture.

Rune, at her shoulder, cleared his throat. “Actually, ya
promised not ta tell
Blackstone
who attacked them.”

Oh? Come to think of it, he was right. Siobhan gave him an
admiring glance. “Rune, you crafty rascal. You’re quite right, I did promise
them only that, didn’t I? In that case…Guildmaster, it was Silent Order that
did the attack. In all fairness, however, they were hired to do so and did not
know the identity of their victims.”

“Silent Order,” he hissed between clenched teeth. “Hired or
not, they should have known better. Who hired them?”

“Now that’s a question I don’t have a whole answer to. The
only thing that my informant could tell me was that it was a guild from
Coravine.”

Jarnsmor blinked at her blankly. “Coravine? Coravine,
Orin
?”

“You know, that’s exactly what my reaction was.” Siobhan
rubbed at the bridge of her nose briefly. “It still doesn’t make an ounce of
sense to me. I hope that once you, and the guildmaster of Silver Moon, put your
heads together with Lirah, you can come up with a good explanation. I’d even
take a good theory at this point.”

He rubbed at his chin in deep contemplation. “Of all the
ideas I entertained, this wasn’t among them. How very mysterious. But
theorizing can wait, I think, until they are safely here. How many are
injured?”

“Thirteen heavily injured, two lightly so,” Wolf supplied
behind her.

“I’ll make preparations.”

“Sir, I haven’t found a moment yet to send word back to
Blackstone reassuring Darrens that we found them,” Siobhan offered.

“I’ll notify him as well,” Jarnsmor promised.

“Also, can you tell me if Guildmaster Hammon has arrived
safely?”

“Indeed he has, two weeks ago.” Jarnsmor tapped a fist
against his lips. “I wonder why he wasn’t attacked as well?”

Also a question she wanted an answer to. Siobhan had quite a
stack of things that didn’t make sense to her at the moment and she didn’t like
it. “I’m just as grateful he wasn’t, sir, as his son is in my guild.”

Jarnsmor’s brows shot up. “Is he now? Then should I inform
Hammon he’s coming?”

“It wouldn’t hurt.” She’d certainly tell Markl his father
was safe and sound. “But for now, I’d like to go back to Vakkiod and help Lirah
get everyone ready for transport. I have a Pathfinder standing by, ready to
bring people here. If you can have your escort wait for us at the path’s end?
We only need them for escort through the city and to here.”

“Certainly. No one can attack while you’re on the path,
after all.”

True. An open path was impenetrable to anyone outside of it.
It was one of the benefits of traveling that Siobhan enjoyed. That and skipping
over hundreds of spans within minutes.

“Then with your leave, we’ll return shortly.”

It was no mean feat moving all of Lirah’s party to Iron
Dragain’s main compound. Her people were willing, but hurting, and everyone
took care to move them as painlessly as possible. Even with dedicated help, it
took most of the day to make the trip and get them settled again.

At least they were in better quarters now. Jarnsmor gave them
a whole wing of rooms that were right in the main building, each room a near
copy of its neighbor. The rooms all had two mid-sized poster beds, a small
table and chairs in the center of the room, with a window that looked out over
a manicured garden. It had an airiness that the cramped storage room in Vakkiod
had not, and Siobhan fancied that a person couldn’t help but feel a little
better staying in rooms these nice.

Because of her preoccupation with Blackstone’s people,
Siobhan missed it when Hammon Senior came and found his eldest son. In fact,
she hadn’t even known the man was in the building until she went into the
common room that linked all the rooms together.

Markl, who sat facing her direction, caught her eye and
waved her forward. She did so without hesitation, openly studying the man
sitting on the couch next to him. Superficially, he didn’t look in the least
like Markl. His hair was a dark chestnut, skin pale from lack of sun, with a
paunch that suggested he preferred sitting at a desk over being out and about.
But then he turned to look at her, smiling in greeting, and she saw the
similarity. He had the same smile and easy charm as his son.

He rose to his feet at her approach, Markl rising with him
and offering the introductions, “Father, this is Siobhan Maley, Guildmaster of
Deepwoods. Siobhan, my father, Nuel Hammon, Guildmaster of Silver Moon.”

“Exaltations and blessings upon your house, family, and companions,”
Nuel Hammon greeted, extending a hand.

She blinked, not expecting this highly formal greeting, but
managed to accept the hand with a firm grip and reply in kind, “Exaltations and
joy to you and yours.”

Judging from that slightly startled look from Hammon, he
hadn’t expected her to know the proper way to respond, but was pleased by it.
Why he thought that, she had no idea. Anyone spending any amount of time around
Markl would pick up on all the niceties eventually. She’d never met a more polite
man. “Thank you. Forgive my surprise, Guildmaster Maley. I have heard of you
and your reputation is excellent, but I had not thought you to be so young.”

Siobhan couldn’t help but laugh ruefully. “I was made guildmaster
at a ridiculously early age. I am relieved to see that you arrived here without
trouble, sir.”

“I’m just as glad to
be
here without being attacked,
although I am very sorry that Lirah Darrens’ party was not as fortunate. Markl
has told me what you have discovered and I have some theories regarding the
matter.”

She cocked her head slightly. “I would certainly like to
hear them. My mind has twisted itself into knots trying to make sense of this.”

He waved her to a nearby chair, silently inviting her to
make herself comfortable. After the day she’d had, he didn’t have to twist her
arm. She promptly settled herself into a wing backed chair that faced the
couch.

The common room had been designed to either conduct business
meetings in or for socializing. It had a variety of chairs, couches, and settees
that were arranged in small circles so that people could comfortably sit and
converse. It had no windows here, as it sat in the middle of the building, but
someone had installed skylights in the ceiling which cast enough natural light for
the room to naturally glow. One spot of sunlight hit the chair she sat in and
warmed it up quite pleasantly. She unconsciously smiled as the warmth settled
along her back.

As soon as she’d settled, Hammon relaxed back into his own
seat, legs comfortably crossed and hands resting on his stomach. “Markl tells
me that you’re aware of the purpose of Silver Moon, Blackstone and Iron Dragain
all meeting?”

“To form a trade monopoly,” she responded bluntly.

“Quite so.” A brief smile darted over his face. “We’d hoped that
by doing so we could afford to expand and raise the levels of the bridges, as
I’m afraid that if we don’t start fixing them
now,
they’ll become nigh
unusable in fifty years.”

He might very well be right. It took luck, timing, and speed
to cross the bridges now, and the larger caravans had to do it in stages in
order to clear them before the tides rose to a dangerous level. If something
wasn’t done about them soon, it would be impossible to cross the bridges
quickly enough, and they’d have to abandon them altogether and start shipping
everything by sea. Just the idea made her wince. “So, the monopoly was in fact
proposed to finance the project.”

He spread his hands in a helpless shrug. “We couldn’t come
up with another viable option. No one guild has the means to do such a thing,
and it’s dangerous for just one guild to be in charge of the project to begin
with. It would encourage a sense of…ownership, I’m afraid. And if they feel
that they own the bridge, all sorts of trouble will eventually arise from it.”

Like levies and taxes that no one would be willing to pay
but would be willing to fight about. Yes, didn’t that picture just give her a
headache. “I see your point.”

“We’d thought that with three of us, we’d have the means to
fix the bridges, and no one guild would be responsible for it, so it would
avoid trouble. Of course, many are going to be unhappy about our creating a
monopoly on select trade goods in order to manage this…but we’ve only so many
resources to draw upon. In order to make this happen,
something
needs to
be sacrificed.”

She lifted a hand and rubbed at one temple. “Someone in
Coravine disagrees with you, sir.”

He grimaced. “And more vehemently than I predicted, too. We
knew that people would be unhappy with what we did here, at least in the beginning,
but to actually send
assassins
? That was completely outside of our
predictions.”

“Fallen Ward is the guild over Coravine. Do you believe them
to be behind this?”

“I can’t imagine that an attack of this significance was
planned and executed without their knowledge. Were they the ones behind it? I
don’t know. I wouldn’t think them this foolhardy, to attack Blackstone openly
like this, but then I didn’t imagine that anyone would send assassins period.”

Markl cleared his throat slightly. “We believe that their
plan was made so that we would never know their identity. It was meant to frame
either Iron Dragain or Silver Moon for the attack so that we would never
suspect anyone else.”

“If not for the fact that I stumbled across a man who used
to work for Silent Order, and he brought me to an informant of that guild, we
might not have put it all together,” Siobhan added. “If you think about it,
that was an amazingly fortunate stroke of luck that I was able to pull it off.
In normal circumstances, I’d never have been able to manage that in a foreign
city. Of course, Iron Dragain would have been able to find the same
information…”

“But under the circumstances, with them being the suspects,
if they’d come to us and said that it was a guild from Orin that had ordered
the attack, we’d never have believed them,” Markl finished grimly. “It’s only
because you were the one that discovered it that everyone can believe it.”

“So really, their original plan had a very high success
rate,” she concluded, lifting her shoulders in a shrug. “We’re fortunate that
things happened as they did, although it sounds callous to say so.”

 “Indeed, but I understand what you mean. The thing that
bothers me in all of this is their response to the proposed monopoly. I
expected them to react, yes, because Orin has always struggled financially.
Their location and lack of specialized products have cost them dearly when it
comes to economic growth. But
attacking
a guild that has a direct impact
on their markets is nigh akin to financial suicide. Blackstone alone has the
power to shut down a third of the market in Orin. In fact, if Darrens doesn’t
do just that after hearing what happened to his daughter, I’ll be highly
surprised.”

Siobhan knew with grim certainty that Darrens would likely
do just that. He was a fair man in many respects, but he was a ruthless one and
everyone understood that crossing him would cost you dearly. The nameless guild
of Orin was a fool to attack Lirah.

“I can’t imagine that they wouldn’t know what the
consequences would be,” Markl stated slowly, perplexed. “No matter how high
your rate of success is likely to be, isn’t it foolhardy to not expect
repercussions?”

“And that’s what is bothering me,” his father agreed, mouth
pursed. “In their shoes, I wouldn’t be trying to end the monopoly, I’d be
fighting to
join
it. For them, this is a golden opportunity that comes
along once in a lifetime. Or once in every several lifetimes. They need a boost
of some sort to help their economy, and this trade agreement would have been
the perfect stimulus. So why try to sabotage it?”

Siobhan stared at him in stunned silence for a moment. She
hadn’t even considered that, but he was right. Why wouldn’t Orin try to join
in? As much as the agreement would have hurt them, it would have done worlds of
good, too, if they’d been a part of it. “Were they panicking? Unable to think
clearly?”

“Perhaps,” Hammon allowed, although his tone said he didn’t
think that was the case. “But I’m inclined to think that there is something
else, some other part of this puzzle that we are not seeing. I believe that
Coravine is up to something, something that they’ve kept from the eyes of the
world, that would influence them to attack first instead of bargaining.”

“What?” Markl demanded.

“I have no idea,” Hammon admitted. “But it is imperative
that we find out, and soon, otherwise I think this whole situation will quickly
degenerate.”

ӜӜӜ

That wasn’t the end of the conversation, and with Lirah’s
people settled, her own guild came and joined them in the common room. But as
much as they discussed, and offered theories, none of them felt they had really
arrived at an answer. After dinner, they unanimously went to bed rather than
pick up the debate again.

Siobhan’s guild had been given a set of rooms that was near
Blackstone’s, theirs being on the opposite end of the common room. Her own
room, shared with Sylvie, was a mirror image of every other room in this wing.
She couldn’t seem to relax in it, as nice as it was, but instead found herself
tossing and turning in the bed.

Giving up, she threw back the covers and retreated to the
miniature garden that she could see from her window.

No one else was awake, and nothing stirred. She sat on the
edge of the porch, in nothing but loose pants and an oversized shirt, letting
her bare feet dangle in the shallow fish pond. The cool water felt good to her
aching feet. She’d been on them most of the day and her body told her in detail
about how it didn’t appreciate that.

As tired as she was physically, her mind wouldn’t let her
rest and insisted on going over everything said today. She’d hoped that the
stillness of this moonlit garden would soothe her and her thoughts would
settle, but after sitting here for several minutes, that wish proved to be in
vain.

Something didn’t feel right about this.

Siobhan couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but she was
missing something. Something vital, at that. The reasons and theories of this
afternoon made sense, certainly, but she felt that there should be something
more to this. Something…with a deeper significance that would drive a guild to
such desperate lengths. And it
was
desperate—picking a fight with
three
of the major guilds on two continents that could directly affect trade with all
of Orin couldn’t be described as anything else. In fact, Siobhan labeled it as
the plan of a madman.

But what? What could possibly be so important that it would
justify hiring assassins and making enemies of major guilds?

The hallway door softly opened and closed behind her, Wolf’s
familiar heavy tread making the floorboards vibrate slightly. With a muted
grunt, he sat down with legs on either side of her, then put both arms around
her waist, chin resting on top of her head.

Despite her heavy thoughts, she couldn’t help but smile. He
only did this when he was certain no one was watching, as if embarrassed to be
caught doing anything so sentimental, but she loved it when he did. Siobhan
felt the weight of her duties very strongly. She had from the very first day of
being guildmaster. Sometimes, like now, the weight became almost crushing. Her
decisions, good or bad, directly influenced the lives around her. A careless or
poorly thought-out command could cost her a friend. Thinking like this made her
job hard to bear sometimes.